Fremantle CEO Steve Rosich went on ABC Radio this morning to give context to a report on the back page of Saturday's The West Australian about an upcoming and scheduled meeting with the AFL Players' Association.
Fremantle are set to meet with AFLPA CEO Paul Marsh on Thursday in an annual meeting, one that is also scheduled with the other 17 AFL clubs throughout the year.
Rosich said that The West Australian's assertion that the meeting was to discuss Fremantle's current injury and rehabilitation management was incorrect.
The article did correctly state that there have been no complaints from Fremantle players to the AFLPA on this issue.
Rosich added that Fremantle players ranked the club’s welfare and off-field services highly in the annual AFLPA players survey.
"It would have been nice to have a right of reply in the article on the back page of The West Australian today," Rosich said on ABC radio.
"There is an annual meeting between the club and the AFLPA, and it takes part at this time of the year, each and every year.
"They do it with all 18 clubs, our meeting with the AFLPA is this Thursday and it has been planned for some time.
"The topic of discussion that was referred to (Fremantle's injury management) wasn't on the agenda but I'll be happy and keen for our players to talk to the AFLPA if they have any concerns.
"As the article said today, when they (The West Australian) spoke to Paul Marsh, the CEO of the AFL Players' Association, (Marsh said) there has been no dialogue between any of the players and the AFLPA on the concerns in this area.
"It's certainly is different to what we see from the feedback that we get independently from the players in the annual AFLPA survey, where our players rate us independently with the AFLPA as one of the top performing clubs in the AFL in terms of our services to players off the field.
"That's a bit more context around the article in the paper today."
Rosich said that the meeting was planned to discuss other topics.
"We had contacted the AFLPA earlier this week regarding the agenda, and this (injury management) wasn't on the agenda," Rosich said.
"There are other items such as the off-season break, AFLX and the illicit drugs policy from the AFL.
"I did call Paul this morning just regarding his comments and obviously, he was responding to a call and made some statements.
"They're a very supportive organisation, our club and our playing group work very closely with the AFLPA.
"Angie Bain, who is the state representative of the AFLPA, visits our club regularly and we invite her, so we do get that interactive feedback from our players through Angie independently all the time, and as I said earlier, this (ingury management) has not come up."
Rosich also addressed a column that called for an independent review of the club's operations.
He said that the club was always reviewing its processes, with general manager of football Peter Bell leading a review of the 2019 season as Fremantle plan for the 2020 season and beyond.
"In terms of what we're actually doing in September (2018), we replaced Chris Bond, our GM of football, a key role in our football operations with Peter Bell," Rosich said.
"Peter's been in the role now for 10 months. Initially, it was about working really hard to orientate - it was a new role for him - so learning and developing and growing in that role.
"From about May, as planned, the scope that he's been given by myself is to really look at all operations, not just for this season but how we set it up for next season, 2020 and beyond.
"(We're) looking at things we can enhance, improve, do differently, including people and structures and those sorts of things.
"That work is ongoing. We reported on that at our board meeting earlier this week and by the end of the year, we'll look to turn up those plans under Peter's guidance and I'll be assisting him strongly in that.
"What that shows that is we've got really good people and good structures, but you can always improve and enhance, and that's clearly what we'll look to do.
"As we've gone through the rebuild, it's now trying to get us back to really challenge for finals on a consistent basis.
"We find ourselves one game out of the eight with four to play, so we're alive, but we want to get back to playing finals consistently as soon as possible so we're looking at everything in that process."
